Leonard LaPadula - CEO

In my User Results for 2011 post, I illustrated the ways in which users of The Machine greatly benefited in their leagues. I showed how active users that drafted with The Machine ended the season with a 21% probability of winning their league. I also explained that The Machine’s win probability calculation after the draft is a good indicator of actual probability to win, which gives evidence that the mathematics are accurate.

So now that you know how our users did in 2011, you might be interested in how I did in my own leagues. Here’s the run down. For the Fantasy Football 2011 season, I managed teams in three different leagues:

Fantasy Sports Trade Association Expert’s Draft Pick Contest

CBS Double Diamond league

My personal league with MyFantasyLeague

Before I continue, it’s important to note that building The Machine has kept me too busy to read player news or watch many games throughout the season. As a consequence, my NFL football knowledge has dwindled significantly since founding Advanced Sports Logic in late 2009. So last year, I relied entirely on The Machine for information on all three teams that I managed.

My team in the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Expert’s Draft Pick Contest competed against many of the industry’s elite. Despite such stiff competition, for the second year in a row, we are proud to say we made it to the playoffs! As you can see in the contest ranking below, our performance this year was exceptional.

Next, I joined a CBS Double Diamond league. I did this because of a friend who considered investing in Advanced Sports Logic challenged me and told me if my team did better than his, he would invest. Although my friend’s fantasy football history included going to the playoffs nine out of twelve times and winning three championships, I accepted the challenge. What happened? The Machine ended up doing better than my friend in this CBS Double Diamond league, achieving the second highest fantasy point total. And considering the odds were against me – The Machine was in the toughest division, it lost one game by one point and another game by two points, and it lost Jarvid Best and Fred Jackson – The Machine only missed making the playoffs by one win. Here are the results from the CBS Double Diamond league:

So what happened to my friendship? Well, my friend is now a top investor at Advanced Sports Logic!

Finally, there was my own personal league. This was a keeper league and The Machine was indicating that my team was way behind at the start because of my poor keeper situation. Out of 12 teams, it indicated that I had a 4.6% probability of winning the championship, which is dismal in anyone’s book. So I decided to use The Machine’s auction draft recommendations table to come up with a keeper value and draft pick value spreadsheet. Then, I did a series of trades, including trading my 1st round pick (I was 4th overall) for a 2nd and 3rd round pick. I finally came out of the draft with a 15% probability of winning the championship and my team eventually made it to the playoffs. Here were the league standings at week 13:

I didn’t end up winning, but a friend of mine who also used The Machine to refine his player lists and strategies did win our league championship. Congratulations Rob!

By using The Machine for all three of my teams, I was able to stay competitive despite the level of competition, my starting point (bad keepers) and my lack of time to stay on top of the latest NFL news. Nevertheless, the Advanced Sports Logic team wants to do better in 2012, so we have been hard at work in the off-season to bring you even more for The Machine – Fantasy Football 2012. Check back soon for my next post where I will explain some of the opportunities we identified for making The Machine even better, based on our 2011 experiences.